Email strategy game for PC

"Challenge Everyone!"

Designed and developed by
The Pickford Brothers

Published and hosted by
Zee-3

Zee-3 websites:

Development method

Some notes discussing the development method used for Naked War

Naked War is designed and developed by the Pickford Brothers. We're a two man team (although we've had some help from our audio designer, musician, testers, and others), and the initial development of the game took about two years.

We say 'initial' development because there's more to come, but that's not to say we're releasing an unfinished product. Far from it. We think our approach to developing Naked War is a new one - we don't have a name for it - and we think it warrants some kind of explanation.

We've spent over 20 years developing games in the mainstream video game industry, always at independent development studios. Although there have been lots of changes over that time, the rhythm of the development cycle has remained the same:

• Begin development, full of ideas and enthusiasm, hoping to make the best game we can
• Long boring middle bit (this used to be as low a month, but is now often 2 years or more) just doing the work
• Crunch time at the end as deadlines approach - lots of late nights, pizza and stress
• Compromise as you are unable to finish off the best bits of the game, or have to cut out whole chunks to meet the Christmas / Easter / Thanksgiving release window
• Finish the game and send it to the manufacturer
• Pause for breath (lucky developers get a holiday at this point, unlucky ones just get Friday afternoon off)
• Start our next project, full of new ideas and enthusiasm
• Reviews of the finished game start coming in
• Game is released to universal acclaim / indifference / hostility / hilarity (delete as applicable)

In the old days we got no feedback whatsoever beyond the reviews of the game. Nowadays disgruntled customers might slag the game off all over the internet once it's been released.

The problem with this cycle, however, is that the feedback - either the reviews or the (more important) customers' reactions - doesn't start until the developer is knee deep in their next project. At this point the developer will be happy with any positive feedback, but either indifferent ("Who cares what they think of GameX, I've got GameY to worry about now"), or defensive ("If only they didn't make us take out my brilliant driving section, the game would have been great") about negative feedback. The developer is in no position to do anything about negative feedback anyway, and is too busy on their next game to give it proper consideration.

Only when a sequel is made does the developer get a chance to fix some of the problems in the original game, and its no accident that some of the best video games around are those which have been remade again and again - Zelda, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, Quake, etc. giving the developers a rare chance to respond to player feedback and get things right; building on what worked and dropping what didn't.

By going 'indie' and self publishing our game online we can break out of this cycle.

We're excited because we see a brand new opportunity for old-hands like us - a way to finally engage with our audience, consult with our customers, and allow the players to influence the continued development of a game.

We've had valuable feedback from testers during the initial development of Naked War, as all games do, but at the point of release we don't consider our work to be over, we hope that a new phase has begun.

By self publishing we have the ability to communicate with our customers through this website, to listen to what players like, what they hate, find out what works, and what doesn't. And, because the game is available freely for download, we can respond to criticisms and suggestions and carry on improving the game after release.

As designers we know that we don't get every decision right. Designing original games is difficult because you have to spend so much mental effort engineering a custom piece of software at the same time as designing the game that often you don't realise what was wrong with a game, or what was missing, until several months after completion when you've cleared your head.

We're not going to use the fact that we can patch and update the software as an excuse for releasing an unfinished game. Instead we see this as a chance to almost start from scratch re-learning how to design games, working in partnership with real players, real customers, outside the hermetically sealed bubble of the top-secret development studio.

This is a completely new experience for us. We've never had direct feedback from our audience before, and we've never had the opportunity to change our games based on player response. It's an opportunity we plan to grab with both hands!

Although we are still planning to start work on new projects (we're full of ideas and enthusiasm for new games, as always) we will continue to develop Naked War. We already have a roadmap sketched out of new features and additions - some content based, some more fundamental game improvements - and we fully expect this list to change and expand as we open a dialogue with the players of Naked War.

» View the Naked War roadmap.

 

The Pickford Brothers
2nd December 2005

Return to:

« About

Naked War game design, code, graphics, audio, documentation and website copyright © 2005, 2006 The Pickford Brothers.
Naked War and the Naked War logo are trademarks of The Pickford Brothers. Licensed to Zee-3.
Zee-3 and the Zee-3 logo are trademarks of Zee-3. Zee-3 is a trading name of Zee 3 Limited.